Signposts On The Road To Literacy

December 2, 1990|BY BILL BELLEVILLE

TYRONE WALKER IS A TALL, BROAD-SHOULDERED man who makes his living driving a 14-wheel tractor trailer rig over the highways of Florida. Walker, who hauls gravel and sand, is on the road every day by 2 or 3 a.m., when the streets are less crowded and a cool early-morning crispness is in the air.

When he travels through Fort Lauderdale, Orlando or Tampa, Walker looks closely at the signs on the road, carefully committing each bend, twist and crossmark of a letter to memory, and burning the location of local landmarks into his mind. The shapes of the letters on those signs tell him where he is headed, and the landmarks help reinforce his sense of direction.

But for Walker, a bright, soft-spoken man with a grown son and an enduring marriage, the words on a sign -- as well as those in newspapers and books, on billboards and bank deposit slips -- might as well be written in Greek.

I MET TYRONE WALKER LATE LAST WINTER. He had decided to ``come back to school,`` as he put it, after a lapse of nearly 30 years.

Since tests showed that he was functioning on a second-grade level, we review grade one before forging ahead. As we do so, I remember the words of the woman who taught me to use the Lauback instructional methods in a literacy workshop. Teaching an adult to read is more than just helping him learn new words, she said. ``It`s about the changes these people can make in their lives -- and how they affect others around them by those changes.`` Learning to read, then, is as much about nurturing self-esteem as it is about phonetics.

As an itinerant journalist I lead a mercurial life in which patience and long-term planning are usually distant virtues. Nevertheless, Walker and I plan to meet, rain or shine, every Monday night in the adult-education building of a local community college.

Despite his size, Walker is a meticulous man who has adjusted to life in a series of well-memorized routines. Before each session he faithfully retunes his (NU)2 pencils in a pencil sharpener by the door, often grinding already sharp points into miniature stilettos. It seems to be his way of gearing up, of becoming prepared.

He tells me he enrolled in the program after several years of thinking about it. ``I wrote down the phone number a lot of times, but I didn`t really sign up until I knew I`d keep at it,`` he says. ``Now, I`ve put it in my mind to learn, and I`m going to do it.``

In Skill Book I we review the most basic of word sounds, covering territory that at first seems so basic I worry Walker might be turned off. But then I remember that what was simple to me could be indecipherable to my student.

Inside our workbooks, I point to a cartoon bird with its tail in the air. Next to it is a large b.

``This is a bird,`` I say, ``with a long tail and a round body.``

I trace the cartoon from top to bottom, as if I were drawing a b, and then look up at Walker.

``Say bird.``

``Bird,`` Walker says.

``Bird begins with the sound bah.`` I make the sound for b with my lips. ``Say bah.``

``Bah,`` Walker says, pursing his lips.

I point to the letter, tracing it with my index finger as if it were a bird with a long tail and a round body.

``Bah,`` Walker says. ``Bah.``

And so it goes, step by cautious step through other cartoon shapes and letters of the alphabet, until we reach zipper.

Finally, we are through Book I and onto the new world of vowel sounds. There is nothing magical about learning to read, I tell Walker. It`s just something we figure out by doing, and doing over again. ``I`m sticking with it,`` he tells me. ``I`ve made up my mind.``

As we move through Book II, we also fall into a more casual relationship, and I discover that patience and a sense of humor are far more important than whether an answer to any question is right or wrong.

In the sessions that follow, Walker addresses letters to fictional people and places he has read about in his workbook, spells the days of the week and the months of the year, and begins picknot as a way of understanding sounds. I also realize what a chasm must exist between his pragmatic, known way of problem-solving and what I am trying to teach him. I wonder if our real-life roles were reversed, if I would have the courage to do what he is doing.

As we progress toward Level III, Walker begins sounding out new words by using the phonics we have learned over the last several months. As he does so, he turns from an unquestioning student to one who seems to enjoy discoveries.

When he confronts a new word with a long a sound, he at first looks puzzled. And then he smiles. ``Well, now, the a`s doing all the talkin` in that word,`` he says. The bird with the long tail and round body seems a long time ago.

After five months, Walker has completed the second level book and scored 90 on a review test. At the end of the session I award him a little diploma and congratulate him on his progress.

He looks closely at his diploma before slipping it inside his notebook, which he tucks under one large arm. ``I`m taking this home to show my wife,`` he says, beaming. ``I was just telling her the other night that I was feeling a lot better about myself.``